Prior lateral entry connectors and presses for application of these connectors to conductors are described in the following patents owned by our common assignee, Panduit Corp. Reference may be made to U.S. Pat. No. 4,481,710; U.S. Pat. No. 4,488,353 and U.S. Pat. No. 4,554,733. A lateral entry connector comprises two parallel connector parts each initially connected to the other only at a single end, allowing harness conductors to be inserted laterally between the connector parts for subsequent termination of the connector press. One style of termination tooling disclosed in the above '733 patent utilizes a slide means for supporting a flat cable where the slide means is disposed to laterally move between a loading position and a termination position where the flat cable is aligned with the connector parts for subsequent termination by the connector press. Although the prior termination tooling effectively applies a single type of connector to conductors to successfully form a wire harness, specialized construction of the tooling for a single type of connector does not allow the flexible use of the tooling for the construction of wire harnesses of different connector types or of mixed connector types.
Termination tooling having various means to test assembled harnesses for electrical faults have been proposed. For example see U.S. Pat. No. 4,654,580. The prior tooling having means to terminate connectors to wire harnesses and concurrently test the wire harness for electrical faults typically are specially constructed to only terminate and test a single type of connector and are unable to be easily and quickly modified to terminate and test different types of connectors.
Thus there is room for improvement in the art for the provision of a single termination tool that can be quickly and easily modified to construct and test wire harnesses of varied types of connectors.